Death penalty bill may be passed in December

A bill seeking to reimpose death penalty may be passed by December, the chairman of the House sub-committee on judicial reforms said on Wednesday.

According to Leyte 3rd District Rep. Vicente Veloso, the fate of the bill will depend on the outcomes of scheduled hearings.

“I think it is doable. It will really depend on how things will go in the committee hearings,” Veloso, a former justice of the Court of Appeals, told reporters.

He said he is personally in favor of restoring capital punishment as a way to deter crime.

The sub-committee also on Wednesday started tackling seven bills seeking to revive the death penalty, one of which was House Bill 1 filed by Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez.

The Speaker proposed lethal injection as the mode to carry out the death penalty.

“There is evidently a need to reinvigorate the war against criminality by reviving a proven deterrent coupled by its consistent, persistent and determined implementation, and this need is as compelling and critical as any,” he said in his measure.

“The imposition of the death penalty for heinous crimes and the mode of its implementation, both subjects of repealed laws, are crucial components of an effective dispensation of both reformative and retributive justice,” he added.

The sub-committee, which is under the House Committee on Justice, will conduct its next hearing on Tuesday to hear the collective voices of critics of the death penalty.

Veloso said the body will conduct four to five more hearings before it refers the matter to the mother committee.